


roll, here in my ashes

by wanderingalonelypath



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Blood and Gore, Elf Mage Origin, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition, alt origin story, gratuitous murdering, healing magic used to kill, my inquisitor be like 'you ever just wanna go apeshit', non-trevelyan mage origin, playing fast and loose with how magic works but it's okay, she straight up kills every templar in sight, the fall of the circles, they said 'the ostwick circle was peaceful' and i was like 'nah'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:00:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28379628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingalonelypath/pseuds/wanderingalonelypath
Summary: The call came to Ostwick one early, stormy morning.
Kudos: 7





	roll, here in my ashes

**Author's Note:**

> SO this is my oc Inquisitor's origin, and two years later she joins the Inquisition and shit proceeds as normal. As you can see, I've twisted canon to fit my needs regarding Ostwick and healing magic. Enjoy and PLEASE read the tags.

The air in the Circle had been fraught with tension for months after news of Kirkwall reached them. All the senior enchanters had left for the vote and returned already, and mage and templar alike waited with bated breath and short tempers. Lyris, on the other hand, was calmer than she had ever remembered being. She didn’t worry about the outcome.

She knew what it would be. The burst that had been building for a thousand years. Kirkwall was the spark, and the vote would be the burn.

News reached them by way of a messenger with a scroll, and the whiteness of First Enchanter Mirian’s face when she read it aloud in the entrance hall, to every mage and templar that had managed to cram themselves into it. Her voice was aged and unstable as she read the words that would change the world as they knew it.

The Grand Enchanter had voted for independence and won.

The next second was completely silent, before chaos reigned. 

Apprentices were running in every direction, a group of mages was heading to the basement archive where the phylacteries were stored, and a group of Templars was moving to stop them. Lyris didn’t run; she didn’t scream, or cry, or faint. She searched the crowd, looking for that tangle of curly black hair, and smiled as she followed it down a hallway toward the officer’s rooms. 

She found him bent over a rucksack, hastily stuffing clothes and provisions into it. His sword lay unsheathed on the bed in front of him, the glint of it harsh when she closed the door and he whirled with it in his palm.

Ser Kendrik was a pale man, but she noted that even he could blanch when faced with death. “Lyris-” He held his hands up as if pleading with her, but she saw the twitch in his arm that belied an oncoming smite. She beat him to the punch, holding out a hand and twisting it sharply. His sword clattered to the ground following a scream, and a tear tracked down his face as he held his useless wrist in the other hand.

“Funny thing about being a healer,” She murmured, stepping deep into the room and feeling her eyes _glow_ in the candlelight. “I can take you apart just as easily as I can put you together.”

He tried to send out another smite with his left hand but she snapped her fingers, breaking the whole arm this time, and he fell to his knees. “Please, please stop-” He sobbed, looking almost like he was innocent. She could still remember his laugh, a fortnight ago, when he held her face down on the stone floor and ripped her leggings into shreds. She remembered that he was annoyed that she would put on another layer, something else for him to get through before he could take her.

She’d begged him to stop, too.

He could do nothing to stop her as she walked closer, tilting his head up with a fingernail. His eyes were a washed-out, watery blue, and over the years she had grown to hate the shade. She suddenly couldn’t bear to look at it anymore, so with a flick of the fingers on her opposite hand, she caught his eyes afire. The smell was atrocious, but his screams made up for it, and kept her standing until his eyes were nothing but puddles on the ground, with the rest of his face quickly following.

A strangled gasp from the doorway and she turned to see Ser Myra, hand over her mouth and looking faintly sick. “You-you-” She was stuttering. Ser Kyra had been stationed at Ostwick for 5 years and had never tattled on her when she stayed in the library after curfew. She would give her a secret little wink and put a finger to her lips.

After the first time Kendrik had dragged her into an abandoned storage room (Ostwick’s Circle seemed to have a convenient amount of those), she was the one who led her to the infirmary, leaving her shaking on the cot while she called for the healer in residence. Before she left them she leaned down, putting a gauntleted hand on her shoulder that made Lyris flinch, and said something that stuck with her to this day.

_”Next time, don’t fight back. It’ll go easier for you.”_

Today, Myra was the one shaking, looking at the ruins left of Kendrik’s face. “Lyris...what have you done?” She cocked her head at the Templar, eyes glowing. “Nothing less than he deserved.” She looked away before Myra could get it in her head that she had a demon inside her, bending down to pick up Kendrik’s fallen sword. Myra hadn’t moved from the door, but she let out another gasp when Lyris turned to look back at her.

“I was fourteen.”

Myra shook, hand making aborted twitches to her sword but never committing to pulling it out. “What?”

“The first time he raped me, I was fourteen.”

She took a step forward, sword held loosely in her hand, and Myra’s hand dropped to the hilt of her own. “I never-I never did anything to you. I never did anything.” She was so scared of Lyris, of what she had seen her do, that she couldn’t even think of defending herself. She dimly remembered that Myra wasn’t that much older than her.

“I know,” she said. “That’s the problem.”

She had never hurt her personally though, standing by through her torture aside, so she was kind enough to give her a quick death, stepping close and shoving her sword through her throat, barely flinching at the hot spray of blood that coated her face. Myra was gaping at her, choking, dying and still afraid of the little elf with a stolen sword. She let her body slip to the ground and stepped into the hallway.

It was in utter pandemonium. Mages and apprentices and Enchanters and Templars were running in all directions, some making a break for the doors while others fought. There was a pair fighting not too far from her, a near-elderly Templar fighting a Junior Enchanter that helped teach her healing. She walked up behind the Templar, not remembering his name until she had already thrust a sword through the back of his head. Magic thrummed in her arm, making the weight of the sword almost feather-light.

The Junior Enchanter-Iriel-nodded her thanks to her before moving down the hall behind her. She continued on, dealing death to everything clad in silver armor, every Holy Sword. The sounds of the fight dulled in her ears until all she could hear was the pounding of blood in her ears; all she could feel was the thick stick of it on her face and hands. She used her sword more than her magic, feeling the strain of weak muscles bolstered by magic, but there was something sweet about killing them with her own hands.

She waved a hand at another one, catching the buckles of her armor on fire. She scrambled to yank the armor off, and Lyris rewarded her for succeeding by impaling her through the middle. Brown eyes ringed with betrayal.

_Ser Jula. Looked the other way when I was screaming in the library while she was on shift._

She saw mages running through the great door en masse but didn’t follow them, making her way to the apprentice dorms to finish her work. The first thing she saw while walking in was Elaric-sixteen, barely a month Harrowed-heaving from a recent smite, wrists pinned to the floor by Ser Allan while his other hand ripped at the boy’s smallclothes. She took her stolen sword in two hands, slick with blood, and severed his head from his neck in one swing. It landed with a wet thump next to Elaric’s own head, and he kicked it away before hurling his breakfast onto the floor.

On and on she went, killing and killing and killing, deaf to anything else. By the end of it all she stood in the stockroom, central in the tower, surrounded by what remained of the Templars that gathered to make some sort of last stand against her. The last of the mages were long gone, so they must have thought her easy prey. She had cataloged their faces as she struck them down.

_Ser Kana. Held me down._  
_Ser Quinlyn. Watched and palmed himself through his skirt._  
_Ser Weston. Joked about me being ‘small and tight like a good elf’ over breakfast._  
_Ser Jeyne. Guarded the door._

In the end, only silence remained. She was covered in blood and bits of gore, surrounded by the sins she committed. Was the Maker here, watching her now? Did He approve? Or did He intend to smite her Himself, once she was dead? She giggled at the thought, throwing her head back, and then she was honestly _laughing_. She laughed until tears tracked down the blood on her cheeks, laughed until she was sobbing, _screaming_. There was no one left to hear her. She was all alone.

The sword dropped from her red hand with a sound too loud for the stillness. She must look like a monster to anyone who would walk in. No one would though; she had killed anyone who might. Their bodies still sluggishly dripped blood. _Does this make me like them, now?_

The thought should horrify her; then again, what she had done today should have horrified her. She found she couldn’t feel much horror at the moment. These people had been the source and witness of her misery for years. She didn’t regret paying them back in kind.

She looked around at what remained: empty crates, scattered paperweights and useless trinkets, empty rucksacks. Everything spotted with blood, literal and metaphorical. How many mages had suffered within these walls?

Flame leaped to her fingers almost before she even called for it, and they caught easily on the wood crates and corpses. It licked up the walls, caressed her arms like a lover’s kiss, and she grinned into the blaze.

 _I am no monster._ She thought. _I am Andraste, and this is my pyre._


End file.
